


I thought you died alone (a long long time ago)

by Cleb (executive_gay)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Essek Week, Future Fic, Gen, Technically an AU, but don't worry he's ok now, consecuted au, consider this my contribution for the week, due to recent information, essek dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:34:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23465497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executive_gay/pseuds/Cleb
Summary: Of course, you’ve heard about the Luxon your whole life. Most children born in the noble dens turn out to be consecuted souls. At least that’s what they say― you find it unlikely that the Luxon, a supposedly impartial deity would choose only children of a high rank to bestow it’s souls upon. That’s why you find it unlikely that you’ll turn out to be consecuted yourself, despite the fact that everyone seems to assume you’ll be.Basically, I was thinking about what would happen if essek was executed, and then came back, and had to deal with All That going through anamnesis.
Comments: 24
Kudos: 76
Collections: Essek Week





	I thought you died alone (a long long time ago)

Of course, you’ve heard about the Luxon your whole life. Most children born in the noble dens turn out to be consecuted souls. At least that’s what they say― you find it unlikely that the Luxon, a supposedly impartial deity would choose only children of a high rank to bestow it’s souls upon. That’s why you find it unlikely that you’ll turn out to be consecuted yourself, despite the fact that everyone seems to assume you’ll be.

Still, wondering about who you’ll be― who you were― is interesting. It’s a popular topic of conversation among you and your peers. Thiera has dreams of fighting great battles, being a hero of the Dynasty. Sometimes she claims those dreams are memories, even though you all know that anamnesis is at least a year away for the oldest of you. Deron thinks it would be interesting if he had been a minotaur in a previous life, as if that will make him grow horns when he turns fifteen.

You and your sister, Esren, used to make up stories about the great battles you’d fought in past lives, the adventures you’d gone on. Before she left to join her real family in Den Icozrin, she’d wanted to be a scientist. Someone whose studies and research unlocked secrets of the universe. She’d tell you about the things she had discovered in past lives, the things she would still discover in this one.

Back in her room, (you still think of it as her room, though sometimes you wonder if it was ever really hers) there were stacks and stacks of books on dunamancy, on chemistry, transmutation…

Esren left most of those books back in her room.

It was slow at first, a book on history here, a battle strategy one there, until it was clear she was going through anamnesis, and she was taken by the Luxon priests to remember more of her past life. She only came back twice. Once to tell you and your family about how things were progressing, and once to take her things to her new home. To her _real_ home.

You miss her sometimes, more than you can admit. You miss having family. It’s not uncommon among the higher dens to avoid attachment to one’s children― you were never very close to your parents. Why become attached to a child when they’ll inevitably remember who they really are, and leave you for their real family, the one they’ve spent lifetimes with?

That’s one of the real reasons you hope your soul isn’t a new one, despite all the odds against it. There are many benefits, of course, prestige, knowledge, no longer being treated like a child…

If you’re being honest, you don’t think you’d care about all of those things, though. They can all be gained without consecution, if one is willing to work hard enough. But a family? A _real_ one, that wouldn’t leave you at a moment’s notice for more prestige… that is something you cannot build on your own.

❅❅❅

There’s a house in the Firmaments.

You’ll find it if you take a right off of your street, past the house with the still glowing, still living tree on the roof, down through the gates to the Glass Spires (you’ve always thought it’s a particularly pretentious name for a neighborhood), and stop at the house with three towers. It’s been abandoned as long as you’ve been alive, maybe longer. You pass it, every day, on the way back from the Marble Tomes. The weather vane on the tallest tower still spins every which way, with no regard for the wind.

You’ve heard it was the home of the former Shadowhand, before he was executed for treason. You’ve heard that his ghost still haunts the house. It’s a laughable story. Ghosts don’t work that way at all. And besides, you’ve been there enough times to know that the only thing haunting the towers is forgotten memories.

You haven’t been exploring there in a while. Deron left for Den Mirimm six months ago, and he usually headed these expeditions.

( _Den Mirimm,_ Thiera whispers to you, _Imagine that! What if he’s someone from the Bright Queen’s court?_ )

You were bored today, though. Most people your age have left by now; off to pursue _greater destinies_ , or whatever it is Professor Vestril said to gloss over the fact that you’re quickly becoming the oldest― or youngest, depending on how you look at it― people studying at the Marble Tomes Conservatory. They don’t say it, but you know that in a year or so, you won’t have classes anymore. Anyone left over will simply have to learn things the hard way. By themselves.

So you and Thiera walk home one day, and instead of passing the squeaky, slowly rusting gates like you have been as of late, you stop.

“We should go in,” you say. “One more time, for old time’s sake.”

It’s only the two of you now, as you try to float over the gates, almost succeed (you’ve been getting closer every time, you’ll get it someday soon, you _swear_ ), and then give in to letting Thiera shove them open.

“Seriously,” she says, “they’re not even _heavy_.”

They aren’t, really, but it’s more about the performance, the idea that you _can_ . And the fact that the gates, being old and rusty, aren’t exactly what one would consider quiet.

The inside of the house is the exact same as it was when it was abandoned fifteen-odd years ago, with the exception of a few things.

Although the Aurora Watch investigators who searched it weren’t able to break through many of the wards, they were able to throw quite a few things around. And you and your friends may have… broken a vase or two. Or three. It’s not exactly like you’ve tried too hard to leave everything in the same place. You’ve knocked over your fair share of cabinets. One time, Esren dared Deron to eat a cupcake you’d found in a cabinet. It was… one of the worst ideas she’d had, and one of the worst ideas that Deron has actually gone through with.

It’s weird to think that an abandoned house might feel empty, but somehow, it does. Beyond just the fact that no one lives in it—the furniture is sparse, and under the layer of dust, it’s almost perfect condition. It’s like no one lived here even before the Shadowhand was taken away.

You know the rumors—that he’s still gliding through the halls, a few inches above the ground, in that uncanny way he did in life. That sometimes people will see the shadow of a figure in a dark mantle in a window. You don’t think the people who started those rumors have ever been in this house, as It feels more like a museum than a place that would be haunted by any type of spirit.

Your footsteps seem to echo louder without Deron and Esren’s constant bickering in the background. There’s no one behind you, as you walk up the stairs behind Thiera, no one to stop you from falling. Even if, realistically, the stairs probably won’t fall beneath you. If the enchantment has held up this long, it probably won’t be fading any time soon.

You follow the same path you always have― through the foyer, up one set of stairs, through one room filled with books, another room filled with books, yet another room filled with books…

It makes you wonder what he was _doing_ in here. None of the books Thiera has been able to break out of the cabinets are on spies, or warfare, or anything you’d think that would be of use for a Shadowhand. It’s all just…

‘Nerdy’ is what Thiera calls it, and you can’t exactly think of a better word, really.

“Do you think any of these have anything _interesting_ in them?” Thiera says, kicking at one of the locked cabinets, filled with yet more books.

“I don’t know.” You’re examining a copy of _Fields of the Universe: A Study in Graviturgy_. “This one seems pretty intriguing...”

“Of course _you_ think that,” she tells you. “Seriously. Look at this! How am I supposed to uncover secrets if I can’t even read this damned handwriting?”

She drops the book in front of you. It’s a religious text, on the Luxon. The margins are filled with various notes, in a messy, cramped hand. On top of that, it’s written in a shorthand that you’ve never seen used before in any type of arcane journals or papers you’ve ever read.

It’s not too hard to decipher, though. The handwriting, while chaotic, follows a lot of the same patterns that yours does when you’re writing particularly fast, and it’s easy to see where letters were dropped out to conserve space, or perhaps maintain secrecy.

“It’s not that hard to read,” you tell her.

She looks over your shoulder at the book.

“Yeah, It’s next to impossible! Like,” she points to what could be confused for a particularly artful squiggle, “what in the Nine Hells is that supposed to say?”

“It says research. See, that’s an S, and there’s an R, and he left out the E-A, but you can see the H—”

“You got all _that_ from a squiggle?”

“Well, they’re just particularly squiggly words.”

“Not to me, they aren’t,” Thiera says, “They’re just squiggle, line, squiggle, squiggle, line, dot squiggle—"

You wave for her to sit down next to you. “See, this one basically says…”

The notes are mostly speculation on the writing in the text. Maybe this particular myth originated from here, perhaps this story came from here, leads to this…

It’s interesting. Some of it is leaning on sacrilegious; words like _myth_ and _story_ aren’t exactly the words that most in the dynasty would use to describe the history of the Luxon. It’s not… wrong, per say. You _haven’t_ ever met a cleric of the Luxon. Really, if you think about it, you’ve never had any reason to believe that the beacons’ power comes from anywhere but the objects themselves.

You get through about a page or two before Thiera stands up.

“Let’s go somewhere else. This room is boring.” Thiera kicks at a pile of books you’ve constructed, knocking them over.

“Hey, I was―”

Thiera looks down at you. “Don’t tell me you were _reading_. You can read things at the Conservatory! Or, you know, a library? Gods, only you would go into a dead person’s house to read…”

You’re about to tell her that you couldn’t actually find many of these books in any library, but she’s already heading through the door and out into the hallway. You sigh, grab a book at random to read later, and follow Thiera through the door. She’s stopped at the end of a hallway.

“This one’s locked,” she says, and turns to you, expectantly. You don’t exactly think that a _Knock_ will work on something that Aurora Watch investigators couldn’t get through.

You tell her as much. “There’s nowhere else we can explore?”

Thiera raises her eyebrows. There really isn’t. You’ve explored every unlocked inch of this house a million times; it’s a testament to how little people care about this place that you’ve never been seen and kicked out.

“I can try, I guess.”

A loud knocking sound echoes through the house. If anyone else was in here, they would have certainly heard it. No one does, obviously. You’re the only ones who’ve been to this place in years.

Thiera pulls at the door handle. Nothing happens.

She makes a face. “Is there any other way to open it?”

You go through your mental catalog on arcane locks. “Nothing in my ability,” you say, “Unless we knew the password, or something…”

“That’s it? Well, what could be the password then? What do beacon thieves put as passwords to their towers?”

“I don’t _know_.”

“How about…” Thiera turns to face the door head on. “Password!”

Nothing happens.

“Really?”

“It was worth a try!”

“Alright… okay… when was his birthday?”

“Why would I know when his _birthday_ was?”

“I don’t know…” You stare at the locked door, as if it might tell you an answer. Thiera sighs. “Maybe we should just go. You know, get some homework done, or something.”

You’re about to agree, but―

Something clicks in your head, looking at that door. It’s like― almost a memory, but you’ve never been behind this door before. You’ve never opened it.

“ _Nein,_ ” you say, and then knock on the door. It swings open.

“ _What,_ was that?” Thiera says, staring at the space. “Where’d you get _Nein_?”

“Um, ah…” you think a bit, and then you remember. “They were an adventuring party? The Mighty Nein? They lived down the street from here, in the house with the tree on top?”

“Alright…” Thiera says, “You read too much…”

It’s strange, though. You’ve never read a single book that’s mentioned the Mighty Nein. You’ve probably only heard the name once or twice in the passing conversation of adults. And you definitely have no idea why the ex-Shadowhand, traitor or otherwise, would leave their name as a password to his tower.

It all gives you pause, but before you have time to really think about it, you can hear Thiera’s footsteps going through the door, and into whatever lies beyond.

The door opens up to a staircase, winding around what you presume to be one of the three towers. The stairs themselves are covered in dust. It’s clear that no one’s stepped on them in the years since this house has been abandoned, maybe even longer. You can see dark footprints in the places Thiera’s stepped, and shiny tracks from where she trails her fingers on the banister.

Under the layers of dust, the air smells a bit sweet. Not the type of sweet you’d get from fresh baked goods, or mold― it’s sharper than that, a bit chemical, that draws you in, like when you’re working with toxins, and you want to lean in farther to breathe in the scent, even though you know you probably shouldn’t.

It makes you feel like… it’s― it’s weird. This whole house has been giving you a strange sense of déjà vu, but a bit stronger. It’s like you’ve been here before, which, of course, you have. And the writings in that book were oddly easy to read, like you were just going over something you’d written before, instead of looking at the musings of someone you’d never met…

This house is just weird. If it’s making you feel weird things, it’s probably just your brain playing tricks on you. You must be subconsciously taking to heart all the rumors surrounding this place. It’s pretty boring, by all standards, you tell yourself. You’re just overcompensating for that.

The feeling of familiarity doesn’t leave as you walk farther up the staircase, around and around the tower. If anything, it gets stronger.

At the end of the staircase, there’s another door. It’s locked again, but the same password works, again. _Nein_. What is it about that word? Why does it pull at the back of your mind like that? Like there’s something you’re forgetting…

And then you push open the door, and there’s a rush of air that lets you know that this door hasn’t been opened in years, decades even, and―

_―You’re tracing another circle in the grooves of the floor; you aren’t sure what exactly it’s going to do, but you hope it might lead to some insight on your research, something, anything but another dead end―_

_―Your eyes are the kind of heavy that they get after staring at a piece of paper in front of you for far too long, and you finally look up, and there’s an arm around your shoulders, lifting you up, and you almost don't think about how long ago the last time you were actually hugged was, because you’ve finished the spell, you_ did _it―_

_―There’s a shattering sound, and an explosion of bits of clay, and a feeling of dejection and panic,_ what went wrong? _A flurry of voices, and half-assed lies and then the room is empty again, and you’re alone,_ again _―_

_―Through the window, you can see the moons high in the sky, and you know that if the sun rose here, it’d be almost morning, and you haven’t rested at all, you spent the whole night wondering where to go from here, what to do, and more importantly, if there’s even a slim possibility that any bakeries are open at this hour―_

“Hey! What’s going on? Hello?” Thiera is waving her hand in your face. “Are we gonna go in?”

“Um.” You blink. “Yes. Of course.”

 _What_ , was that? “We should go after this, though.”

A small part of you, the smart part, is putting all this together now: the things you’ve been taught, the strange feeling this house is giving you, whatever the heck _that_ was, but there’s a bigger part that’s pushing it all down. It would be far too much to deal with now. Ever, probably. It’s terribly unlikely anyways. Impossible, even. (At least, that’s what you’re telling yourself.)

“I have homework, and this place is… kind of scary…”

❅❅❅

You forget about what happened at the house, mostly. For the part of you that doesn’t, well, you find that denial is surprisingly easy, especially when you’re not even entirely sure what you’re denying.

You and Thiera go back to the old Shadowhand’s house a few more times. The uncanny feeling hanging over the whole place never leaves. You stop coming when Thiera starts remembering things. She comes to study one day, telling you about the dream she had, where she was on a boat, in the Kryn navy, and they were meeting the Empire, who was returning the beacons and _oh, you should have been there it was_ amazing, and you don’t hear it. You’ve seen it all before; it’s just someone else leaving you.

You never bother to check who she ended up being. It doesn’t matter, really, in the end. Thiera Daev’yana never really even existed― she was just a vessel waiting for the time her true self could remember and take their rightful place.

It’s another year before you stop hoping that you’ll turn out to be someone important. Another year before you stop pretending that the reasons behind your aptitude for graviturgy, your knowledge of recent history, that strange feeling of déjà vu you get when you open certain books, or practice certain spells, are anything more than the most obvious ones― you read a lot of books. _A lot._ There isn’t really much else to do, other than devote time to study. Not like there’s anyone your age to _talk_ to.

Technically, there is a chance. You’ve read enough books on consecution, the beacons, that you know that without help and meditation, anamnesis can take years. You don’t waste time hoping, though. For all that to work, you’d need to have at least a few memories already. Which you don’t. Except that time with Thiera, at the Shadowhand’s―

But that’s impossible. Absolutely implausible. Besides, nothing like that has happened since.

Until― of course.

❅❅❅

You’re at the Marble Tomes Conservatory. There are a few stacks of books scattered at the desk you occupy. Usually it’s a good enough sign for people to stay away; the Conservatory isn’t exactly much of a social gathering place. It doesn’t, though, seem to be much of a sign for the person who sits down across from you.

“Oh! Fancy meeting you here!”

You’re about to tell whoever just spoke that your desk is already occupied, before you look up. It’s― “Esren?”

“That is my name,” she says. And, it is, you guess. She hasn’t changed it. Most people don’t. It still feels strange, though. Your sister, Esren Biylan is gone. In her place is the Taskhand, Esren Icozrin. You can’t imagine why she’s talking to you. She hasn’t in four years.

“Well,” you say, “hello.” You go back to reading your book. Or, at least, you act like you do. Mostly, you just stare at the page, reading the first sentence over and over again. You have no idea what you’d say to the Taskhand. You have even less idea what you might say to your sister. Best to avoid it.

Esren seems to have a different idea. “What are you working on?” She leans over the table, looking at the mess of books and papers strewn about it. It’s strange. You can tell she’s different, in the way that she sits, the way she chooses her words. But she’s treating you the same as she did years ago, like she never left. Like she’s still your older sister.

And, the thing is, you don’t want to admit it, but you really want her to be just your older sister again. So, instead of brushing her off and giving her a vague answer, like ‘work’ or ‘spells’, you answer.

“Well, it’s a bit complicated, but…” You’ve been reading a bit about echo knights, and you’ve been wondering. Their particular brand of fighting with past versions of themselves has been very useful on the battlefield, and yet it’s never been transferred into a more practical use, for arcanists and practitioners of the more scholarly side of dunamancy.

“There’s never been a spell,” you tell Esren, “to produce an echo.”

“You’re trying to create a spell?”

Well… you hadn’t really thought that far in the future. In all honesty, you’d only started today, and gotten a bit carried away by it all.

It’s― it’s a terribly bad idea― one of the worse you’ve had in your lifetime. You haven’t really put much thought into this spell, the components to it, anything. But there’s a part of you saying it’ll work. And another part of you that looks at Esren and is pushed straight back to being fifteen and wanting nothing more in the world than to impress her. Because, maybe, if you were interesting enough, smart enough, impressive enough, she wouldn’t leave, and you wouldn't be alone.

“Well, yes,” you tell her. You stand up, and reach for your component pouch. “Would you like to see it? Or, what I have so far―”

You expect her to say no, she doesn’t have time for things like that, she’s a Taskhand, after all, and she’s definitely busy, but… She doesn’t.

“Of course,” she says.

You’ll think about it later, how you reach in your component pouch, and it’s almost as if you know what you’re looking for, when you feel the smooth shard of obsidian under your fingers and pull it out. It’s almost as if you’ve done this before, when you look at the shard in your hand and wonder what to do with it, and a place in the back of your mind supplies you with the answer.

You slash the shard through the air, and you’re quite surprised when shadows spill out of the space where it was and coalesce into a figure. You’re a bit dumbfounded, honestly. You didn’t really expect this to work.

A perfect, grayscale copy of yourself blinks back at you.

“How long have you been working on this, exactly?” Esren is looking at the echo, too. She looks quite impressed, and a bit surprised.

You forget to lie about it, to act like this isn’t shocking as it is. “Only… this morning… about…”

“Wow. How old are you, again?”

You know that there’s no reason for Esren to know how old you are anymore, even if you still know her exact age. Even if you still remember her birthday every year, and wonder if she’s celebrating it, or if she’s celebrating someone else’s birthday, on another day.

“Ah, I’m, nineteen.” And a half, technically, not that she cares.

“Mm. A bit late, but not really, in the grand scheme of things. You might want to stop by a temple sometime soon.”

“A temple? Oh, alright…”

It’s not till after you sit back down and pick your book back up, that you realize what she meant. It’s… it’s really the only plausible explanation. You’re not _that_ good at dunamancy. That spell was definitely more complicated than most things you’re able to cast right now. And you’ve read quite a few books, you’d know if mages in the past had succeeded in creating their own echoes.

It seems that someone has, apparently. Though you wonder why they'd never shared it with anyone― at least no one who’d write it down.

You don’t stay at the Marble Tomes long after that. Too many thoughts swirling in your head to focus. You hope Esren doesn’t notice you as you put your books back on their shelves and pack up your papers. She does.

“Hey.”

You stop and turn to her.

“I’ll see you sometime, maybe? Perhaps in my own Den, even?”

 _We’re in the same damned Den,_ you’re about to say. You don’t. You’re not, really, not anymore.

“Perhaps,” is what you say instead, as you stuff all the papers into your spellbook, and put it back into its pocket dimension for safekeeping. (A simple trick, you figured out, a while back. It leaves space in your bag and keeps you from leaving the damned thing in the most unusual places.)

The echo stands there, for a bit, at the desk as you walk away, before you remember to dispel it.

❅❅❅

You have to buy some more obsidian on the way home.

It’s a bit costly, but you need to know. You _need_ to. What, exactly, you need to know, you’re not sure. You need to know that this wasn’t a fluke. That you might actually be able to cast spells of that power. You need to know _why_ you were able to cast a spell of that level. You need to know what being able to cast that spell means. You need to know― a lot of things, really.

So you go to the closest magical shop, and you buy more obsidian shards than necessary. You walk home, and you don’t say hello to anyone before heading straight to your room. (You never do, but… you used to. When Esren still lived there.)

You close the door behind you, take off your cloak, and remove your spell book from its pocket dimension. (You don’t think, don’t know if you’ll need it for this, but. Still good to have around.) You sit on your bed. Look at the pieces of obsidian you bought on the way home.

They probably won’t unlock any secrets. They’re just pieces of rock. Particularly shiny rock. You stare the shard in your hand for another minute, and when it doesn’t provide any insight, you stand up.

You remember the same motions as last time. You make the same slash through the air, produce the same glowing grey break in reality. This time, though, instead of being surprised, you focus on it. It feels a bit silly. Maybe you should have taken Esren’s advice. Stopped by a temple. Asked for help. But… something tells you that’s a bad idea. And anyways, you want more information first.

So you’re staring into the cut in the air, spilling out grayish shadows, growing legs, and arms, and you’re about to give up when―

You remember something. It’s not exactly a vision, like you’d assume it would be. It’s more like the moment when you’re asking yourself a question, and you don’t have to think about it for more than a second before your brain seems to pull the answer out of its depths―

_“These tricks are pretty well guarded.” You were speaking to someone, the last time you cast this spell. It was another decade. Another… lifetime?_

_“Are you putting yourself at risk? By sharing these with me?”_

_Someone is speaking to you. Their accent is one you know you’ve heard before… and yet. You cannot place it._

_The details are fuzzy, in your head. You don’t remember what they looked like. You remember they had red hair_ ― odd, in these parts, you think, but not unheard of― _They had sad eyes._

_You smile at them._

_“Maybe.”_

_You remember a bit, after that. You showed them the spell. Talked about it, a bit, before you did. You were showing off, but you had reason to. This spell was your creation. There was only one person in Wildemount, perhaps the world, that could cast it. Two, now._

It’s slightly annoying, honestly. You had hoped… well, you had hoped that this might provide… insight? Information? You had hoped… it might provide a name, at least, perhaps _some_ context clues.

But… teaching spells? In just this lifetime, you’ve been taught a million spells. It _did_ seem to be a spell of the person’s― your― own making, but…

You don’t even know who you were teaching it to. You have no idea of their name, their face, your relation― well. They had called you a friend. You have no idea why you can remember that, and not a damned name. It had been quite important to you, at the time, that they saw you as a friend. It had made you a bit happy at the time, and a bit sad. You can’t remember why. You can’t seem to remember anything of importance.

It’s severely frustrating. Anamnesis, it seems, takes patience. Perhaps you really should take Esren up on that advice. But… something in you keeps saying something. _Wait._ And― you don’t know why, but you feel like you need to listen to it. You feel like it’s important that you do.

So you wait. Besides, you’ve always been a pretty patient person.

You try to figure out as much as you can before you go to a temple. You’re not entirely sure what enough will be, when you’ll have deemed the information you have worthy to go to a temple with. You want confirmation, first. That the soul in your body is actually older than the nineteen years you’ve spent in this life.

So you collect evidence, in whatever ways you can: a particularly well remembered spell, a sense of familiarity that seems to be a little bit more than a trick of the mind. You thought that was what everyone was describing when they used the phrase, but you’re realizing now that it probably isn’t. Most people on their first life _probably_ don’t have specific memories of being at places the first time they go to them. Unconsecuted souls don’t have flashes of memory when they read about historical events.

After you’ve come to the conclusion that you are most definitely not on your first life, you expect the apprehensiveness to go away. It doesn’t. You trust your instincts well enough, so you don’t go to a temple just yet. You still want to know _why, though_. Why are you so wary of the priests of the Luxon? What did they do to you?

You spend months waiting to figure out more. It’s a slow process. You don’t know what exactly to do to pull out memories, or where to find information on how to do such, but you make do.

It would help if you had any substantial evidence as to who you were. Who you are? You know a few things: you were a practitioner of dunamancy, quite a good one. You seemed to know the group of adventurers that had lived in the house across yours, the one with the tree still growing out of the top of it: The Mighty Nein.

They seem important, somehow, despite the fact that they only lived in the Dynasty for less than half a year, and spent most of that year off to go gods know where. Apparently, they had a hand in ending the war. Funny how you’ve never heard that about them in all of the books you’ve read, or the conversations you’ve overheard.

You were in the bright queen’s court, or at least you went there once or twice. The palace feels a bit too familiar for the two or three times you’ve been there for parties.

So… you were of high rank, perhaps. That would be nice, you think, to be someone important. But― you can’t immediately think of any high ranking court members who died around the time you were born. At least, none who were likely to come back…

❅❅❅

It’s only a bit after you turn twenty, that you learn something substantial. (Finally. It’s something you never thought you’d have to experience, being in the dark about your own self.)

You know that memories often come by dreams. It’s still surprising, though, the first time.

_―You’re sitting at the edge of a… hot spring? It seems to be something like that. A hot tub, heated by magic, is what the tall one told you. Caduceus― that’s the name your mind supplies you with. They ask you questions, and you answer them. Some are serious, some are… not. Sometimes you lie in response, most of the time, you tell the truth._

_About your research, about your father, about your generally treasonous ideas about the Luxon…_

_It surprises you more than it surprises them. You’ve never told this much to anyone. They don’t know, of course, that half the words that come out of your mouth are lies and bent truths. You’re a very good liar―_

You wake up, in the middle of the night.

You have answers: You know why you know the Mighty Nein. You were… friends, it seems. (What a strange word, _friends_. You haven’t had much of those, in a while. It seems that this is not a new occurrence.)

You have questions: Why? (It’s always why.) Why were you lying to them if they were the only friends you had? You know few things in life are so simple, but… what did you need to lie so much about? Why was it so important that you lied about it? If you had already bared so much of your soul…

You fall asleep, eventually. It’s a week or so before you have one of those dreams again.

_You’re doing an absolutely terrible job of lying. It could be the environment― you_ hate _parties. Or the wine― unlikely, since you’ve only had half a glass. If you’re being honest, which you hardly ever are, it’s the tiefling who’s standing next to you holding onto your arm._

 _She’s not casting any sort of spell― you’d know if she was― but her presence is making it_ impossible _to lie. Around anyone else, you’d be able to do this, be able to at least hold up a conversation. Your words wouldn’t fall haltingly out of your mouth, any planned stories you had wouldn’t leave your mind. You’re pretty sure you just said something that_ directly _contradicted something else you said a few seconds ago and―_

_And the worst part is that you aren’t even thinking about that._

_The worst part is that the only friends you’ve ever had are_ this _close to figuring out what you’ve done and it’s only a matter of time until they find you out and either you get away and they hate you or you die and they hate you, but either way―_

 _You make an attempt to get out of the conversation. It’s… a terrible excuse, and of course she sees through it the second you try to make it. She tells you to stay, Lord Thane, (what a terrible excuse for an alias) that her momma’s performing tonight and she’s so amazing and_ oh my god I can’t believe that you’ve never come to see her before, _and… And you’ve never been able to say no to Jester Lavorre. So you stay for a song._

_As it ends, you try to make another move to leave, but―_

_Well. You cannot. Make a move to leave that is. Make any movement at all, it seems. You have been paralyzed. Ah._

_So they do know already._

_The dream (memory?) fades a bit, and suddenly you’re under the deck of a ship. Your disguise is down. The figures you’ve come to know as the Mighty Nein sit around you. The red-haired one is right in front of you._

_He’s telling you something, and he’s holding your face, and for the first time since you’ve known him, you can’t hold his gaze, so you stare right above it. And then he presses his lips to your forehead and he tells you that_ maybe you are both damned, _but you can choose to_ do something about it _…_

 _And you’re left there wondering,_ why _? Why is he still here, why are any of them still here, why have they left you alive after all you’ve done? All you’ve done to betray them, all the danger you’ve put them in…_

You wake up. It’s… ah. Oh, gods. Things are starting to fall in place a bit― A lot. You get up, throw on some shoes and a coat.

It’s the middle of the night in Rosohna, not that the sky looks much different than it does in the middle of the day. The moons are in a different position, and you can’t see the shadow where the sun would be if it were daytime.

You walk through the streets. You know the way, perfectly, even though it’s been at least three years since you’ve been there. You… probably should have caught on to little things like this earlier. You probably did, it’s just that denying things can be so easy rather than facing the truth. You guess you have a bit of a history of that.

The gates look the same, though you feel like they feel a bit different. It could be that you’ve changed. Maybe you’re taller. Maybe― you have more memories seeing them pristine and shiny, from just a few inches above the ground.

It’s easier to find your way to the study this time. The same password still works for each lock. _Nein._ You think you know why you used it now.

The study is the exact same as it was when you came here with Thiera. But it’s a bit different, too. It holds more… memories. You pick up an old, brittle piece of parchment, and remember writing notes on the spell inscribed on it. You walk over the grooves in the floor and remember tracing thousands of different arcane circles into them.

You look over at a desk, and remember―

_―Frantically sifting through papers and drawers, looking for something, anything, to distract the watch, to drag their attention away from the adventuring party that will soon teleport into the circle you’ve drawn into the floor―_

_—“… for high treason, the theft of two beacons, and obscuring the location of a third, the Shadowhand Essek Thelyss is to be stripped of his rank and titles and sentenced to death…”—_

_―Walking straight into the waiting arms of the Aurora Watch, with your hands up, doing something you never thought you’d do in a million lifetimes―_

_―Your feet on the floor, your hands bound, as a court wizard waves their hand in an arcane gesture you know quite well at this point, and you can’t help but think that that’s_ your _job, even as you’re being teleported to―_

_―A teleportation circle the middle of nowhere. The wind whips in your face. It feels particularly cold without your mantle on—_

_―You hope they made it out, that they aren’t coming after you, is the last thing you think, as the blast of necrotic energy hits your chest, and the world goes dark―_

You look at the desk, around the room. Technically, you had put two and two together. Technically, you knew what was going on, but you really hadn’t had much time to process it in the short walk over here. It was a lot to think about, and, honestly, you didn’t want to. You wanted to keep the ignorance you’ve held on through these years just a bit longer.

You stand there now, finally taking everything in.

 _Ah,_ you think. _Oh, fuck._

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to enemyofsleep for beta reading  
> (title from The Man Who Sold the World by David Bowie)


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